The Upright Fool
by Niveous Severe
Summary: SPOILERS for P4.  Adachi's been tasked with housing his nephew, Yu Narukami, while his sister and her husband take a year off on a "business trip".  Sure.  Luckily, there's an ongoing murder investigation to keep him entertained.
1. Prelude

_Let us take a man - a very ordinary man. A man with no idea of murder in his heart. There is in him somewhere a strain of weakness - deep down. It has so far never been called into play. Perhaps it never will be - and if so he will go to his grave honoured and respected by everyone. But let us suppose that something occurs…_

_-__The Murder of Roger Ackroyd__, Agatha Christie_

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><p>PRELUDE<p>

"Me? I'm busy, Sono." There was a pause. "Watching TV."

He was leaning against the far wall of his apartment, one hand loosely holding a remote and the other with his cell raised to his ear. Flashing on the television screen opposite him, the local 10 PM weather report predicted another sunny week, which meant that unless someone fixed the air-conditioning on their floor, he'd be suffocating again in the glorified closet that their department called a criminal investigations office. The woman on the screen cheerfully explained that it'd be a great opportunity to get out of the house, that it was looking like it'd be a gorgeous weekend, and Tohru Adachi switched the power off with an irritated sigh. Tossing the remote onto the only cushion at his table, he inclined his head against the wall and allowed his eyes to glaze over with half-lidded indifference.

And then he was laughing drily into the receiver. "Haha, _no_. Look, does this have a point?" From outside the window of his kitchen, he heard the sudden, night-shattering howl of the Satonaka's Saint Bernard, and without really thinking, he walked over to shut it, drawing the blinds over the glass and cutting short the evening draft. Above him, the kitchen light hummed through the resuming quiet.

"So take the kid with—" He frowned. "What? Absolutely not. I'm not brat-sitting a whole year so that you and Narukami can enjoy the uninterrupted sex time." There was an extended silence as he listened, and then he pitched his voice an octave higher and rolled his eyes. "_Just drop off enough groceries so that he doesn't starve,"_ he whined back. "I'm so glad to hear you haven't changed. Why don't you find him a nice classmate to stay with?"

A different sort of pause, a different expression passing over his face.

"Ah," he said at last. The fingers holding the cell gripped it a fraction tighter. He cleared his throat. "As it happens, I'm not stationed in the city right now." A slow, sick smile twitched at his lips as he listened to her reply. He glanced up at the ceiling light, for a moment, catching the yellow glare with eyes that were suddenly brightened by humor. "If I _had_ gotten someone killed, would you still send your son—yeah, yeah, I know, stupid question."

He looked down again and waited. He grinned. "Nope." The phone snapped shut. Still smiling, he pocketed it and went back into the main room.

In the opposite corner from the TV, his desk sat under a tall lamp and a short stack of paperwork that his boss wanted filled in by the next morning. Idly, he wondered if it'd be worth it to work in the errors this time so that Dojima wouldn't catch on right away, or if there was some other excuse he could dig up to get out of doing it at all. Nothing came to mind, so he sat down, found a pen, and started to scribble kanji onto his reports.

He'd gotten halfway through the first sheet when his pocket vibrated with a text.

"_**guessing you haven't called home about transfer"**_

"_**maybe I should surprise them"**_

His lips pressed into a thin line as he went to reply, but by then the phone was actually ringing, and he answered it instead.

"Go to hell," he began dispassionately. Then he let out a long breath and glanced down at the unfinished report with a dull sort of acceptance. "Just demoted. To officer." She replied to that exactly as he'd expected. Adachi stiffened, and with a low snarl, he pushed his chair back from the desk and stood.

"_Shut up_," he said, his mouth stretched with cold fury. "I don't make enough to support two people, so you're sending me a check before I agree to anything."

She was speaking again. Slowly, he sank back onto the chair, bent over with crude exhaustion. The dog was barking again, but this time the noise was dulled, and he barely heard it.

He replied immediately. "A godforsaken backwater shithole called Inaba."

_(((0)))_


	2. Chapter 1

_—Hâtons-nous, dit le commissaire._

_Alors un des deux hommes étendit la main, se mit à découdre le linceul, et, le prenant par le bout, découvrit brusquement le visage de Marguerite._

_C'était terrible à voir, c'est horrible à raconter._

_-La Dame aux Camélias, Alexandre Dumas_

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><p>CHAPTER ONE<p>

**\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \**

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><p>It'd been a relief when foggy Inaba had disappeared into the horizon behind him, and though Adachi wished it were a permanent thing, he had to admit that this was nice. Each kilometer ticking by as he drove past miles and miles of monotonous rice paddies was another monotonous kilometer it'd take him to drive back, and while leaving Inaba was something he couldn't do fast enough, he'd be sure to take his time getting lost on the return trip.<p>

Though, he reflected, it would have been even better had there been a way to come back without the Narukami scion. Judging from the packages he'd mailed over all throughout the past week, Sono's son was going to be all kinds of not-wonderful. There was a part of him that wondered what would happen if he just kept driving straight on until he hit something, preferably something that would break the car into little bits of burning scrap metal. The rest of him remembered that the world didn't work that way.

Sunlight drew mirages ahead of him on the surface of the road, but it had rained the night before, and every now and then he'd be surprised by an actual puddle on the asphalt. Life needed little surprises like that to keep it interesting, even if they were simple. For a while it'd been enough to stir up chaos at work, but that was becoming just another routine. To be honest, harassing Dojima was still fun, but Dojima _got it_, and there wasn't any challenge in dealing with the other morons at the office. Dojima, on the other hand, still thought that he could be bullied into some kind of work ethic, and it was just so much of a delight to prove him wrong.

Yesterday had been a good example of what happened when there was nothing to do. Dojima had decided that it was more fun to obsess over certain dead cases than it was to yell at him. Consequently, Adachi had been left with all the paperwork that needed to be filed just to let everyone know that Inaba was the fucking capitol of Nowhere, and that everything was going so fucking well, it wouldn't have made a difference if he half-assed every job Dojima handed his way. Which was actually the case, and which took a great deal more creativity than just doing what he was supposedly paid to do. It had only taken two hours that time before he'd ditched the office and had swapped out report filing with Tsujimura in favor of policing Inaba. Mostly because it amounted to paid skulking. He'd followed the beat down through the shopping district and then had loitered at Junes for an hour before going back toward the flood plains and the Amagi Inn. When Adachi had exhausted everything there, he'd detoured at Tatsumi Textiles to check up on that one kid who kept going vigilante on the Tamagotchi-gumi (which he privately approved of) and the Futari biker gang (which was something the police should have eradicated years ago). But as things happened, that kid had been out doing errands, and Adachi wasn't about to hang around for a delinquent. After that he hadn't bothered to check back in, and it was likely that Dojima would have had a good yell about that today if Adachi hadn't already scheduled to have the day off.

It was a fact that Inaba had ways of ruining everything.

Adachi's cell phone chirruped and interrupted the beat that he'd been tapping against the wheel. He waited for the ringing to end, and when after that Dojima was stubborn enough to redial, he gave in and answered.

Anyway, it wasn't like there was an officer assigned to this road, and if you were one of those people who couldn't hold a phone conversation and drive at the same time, you didn't deserve a license.

"Hi there, Dojima-san!"

"_Adachi, where the hell are you?"_ Any other time, the sound of Dojima's temper flaring up would have been a promising start to the day. As it was, he'd been trying to forget about work related things, and dumb-head Dojima had just gone and spoiled the fantasy.

Out of habit, he slid into calculated ineptitude.

"Dojima-san…" he whined. "I _told_ you last week, I've got to meet my nephew at the railway station. But I'll be back to work at the office before you know it! You'll barely miss me." It was even true. He'd done the thing correctly for once, since any excuse to get out of Inaba was worth getting it approved.

There was silence from the other detective, though he thought he could hear sirens and muted orders in the background.

"Sir?"

"How soon can you get back?"

"A half hour if the traffic here lets up." Without changing his expression, Adachi floored the accelerator and watched as the rice fields on either side of the pavement became green-brown blurs. Last time he'd been on this road, he had all but lost control of the car. Granted, he'd been feeling pretty awful that day, and there wasn't much of a point in being a cop if you couldn't get away with awesome things every now and then. As of that moment, he'd been playing it safe at a lazy 200 kmh. "Did you need me for something?"

"Yeah," Dojima said heavily. "They found a body near the shopping district."

It was his turn to fall silent. For several long seconds he sat quietly as the road rushed by beneath him. "Really?" he managed at last. "In _Inaba_—I mean…"

"There's no ID on the vic yet. One of the Yasogami students found her hung on an antenna over the Kodo residence." Dojima's sigh came out from the speaker as a burst of static. "We're questioning Kodo-san about it now, but he's as lost as the rest of us."

"And the witness?"

"Saki Konishi. She was on the way to her family's liquor store. Frankly, with the fog this thick, it's fortunate that she spotted it."

And at last Adachi understood why Dojima had called. Currently there were two active detectives on the Inaba police force, though Dojima had the authority to assign additional officers to any case where he thought more were necessary, and there was a choice here, even if it hadn't been stated. He could run along back and do his job, or Dojima would drop him this time and probably delegate from community affairs, just to be sure he regretted it.

Adachi hesitated, tempted even if this was a transparent milestone in Dojima's Stop-Fucking-Around campaign. But Dojima would be head detective on this one, not him, and Dojima would be the one who got all the credit for solving the biggest thing to happen in Inaba since Junes went into business, not him.

Although… Adachi's foot relaxed on the accelerator, and the world slowed down to an easier pace. Dojima had put him on this case even though he'd been out of town at the time, which, everything considered, was a pretty decent thing to do. Plus, you didn't refuse when the boss was offering you handouts. "Alright," he said slowly. "I… I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Do that." The phone clicked as he hung up, and Adachi slid it back into his jacket.

**)-{ ** **)-{** **)-{** **)-{** **)-{**

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><p>He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, exactly, but it hadn't been the rundown platform of Yasoinaba Station. He'd been hopeful after the dream last night—there'd been a mysterious old elf who'd used words like 'destiny' and 'contract', a blonde foreigner in a blue dress, and a fortune reading that had in essence foreshadowed catastrophic disaster. Admittedly he didn't know much about tarot cards, but he had recognized the Tower immediately, and whatever the second card had meant—the Moon?—his elfin diviner had seemed as inappropriately excited about it as he had been. All of it had all taken place in a limousine the color of copper sulfate, there had been absinthe and Armagnac brandy and Perrier champagne, and if videogames had taught him anything, it was that these things tended to be portents of epic adventure.<p>

Yasoinaba Station was not-quite falling apart, but the wood rot suggested that it was only a matter of time before the platform would need to be put out of its misery. Whoever failed to maintain it had also failed to give the place a new coat of paint in the last ten years, though he guessed at some long off time it had been white, from what remained of the original color. He pushed past a screeching turnstile and out through the station's front entrance. Outside, a series of steps led down to a nearly deserted parking lot.

Yu Narukami was seriously disappointed.

Cold fog blanketed everything as if even the weather knew this place was dead. It was translucent enough, though, that he could see the outline of a waving man and a gray car. Hopefully that was his ride back toward civilization. As he moved closer, the figure smiled and nodded politely.

"Narukami-kun, right? I'm Tohru Adachi. Your mom's little brother."

He had only learned that Uncle Adachi existed a few weeks ago, when his mother had told him that to reduce traveling expenses, he wasn't coming with them to tour Europe as part of father's business crusade. Presumably mother's presence was necessary for face, and he really hadn't expected them to hire a tutor just so that he could tag along. All the same, it'd been a surprise when mother had made living arrangements for him outside of the city.

Uncle Adachi was slightly shorter than him and looked for all the world like he'd have rather been back in bed. He didn't seem to have taken any care toward his appearance, which was a little strange, since mother had said he was kind of a casual tyrant and that it would be better not to make things difficult for him. After all, they'd be stuck with each other all year.

He decided to go with "It's good to meet you."

"Yeah…" Adachi shot him a look just shy of disdain, and abruptly the smile was replaced by a careful frown. "You know, I didn't really want to rush things here, but there's been a murder in town—your mom told you that I'm a detective, right? I've already got my boss breathing down my neck to get back as it is, so... We'll have to continue this in the car."

"Oh." And that was how Yu Narukami discovered that he was the protagonist of a small town horror story. He walked around behind the driver's seat, stuffed his suitcase beside his feet, and berated himself for missing all the obvious clues while Adachi drove them out of the parking lot. In retrospect, the fog and generally creepy atmosphere should have been a big tip off—but it was okay, because Uncle Adachi was with the police, and the police had firearms... and his chances of making it though alive were looking positive.

Yu was running down a list for his survival kit when his uncle laughed gently. "Welcome to Inaba, people die here. What a great introduction," he muttered. Adachi ran a hand through his hair and glanced over before turning back to the road. "Honestly, Inaba is… I wouldn't want you to get the wrong idea. It's a quiet town."

"I see." Inaba probably _had_ been a quiet town, but that had been before the coming of the PC.

"I mean, don't get used to all the excitement. It sucks that you had to move just because of your parents." Adachi was scowling and sending the speedometer intermittent death glares. Compliantly, the dial crept higher. "They'll be in Europe, right?"

Yu didn't answer that. It was a sad fact, though, that his parents were the type to send him off to live in a small town horror story.

When Adachi spoke again, his voice was somewhat warmer. "I see. Well, Yu-kun... I know what that feels like."

Yu Narukami doubted it.

**—+ —+ —+ —+ —+ —+ —+ —+ —+**

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><p>His nephew was an exact midget version of the elder Narukami, except that to call Yu a midget was redefining the word to include anyone under six feet tall, and that his eyes were distinctly Adachi grey. But in common both the senior and younger Narukami were naturally uncommunicative, and the drive back to Inaba was predictably silent. Yu couldn't keep a conversation, and Adachi couldn't be bothered to keep trying.<p>

It was more of a relief than he was willing to admit when the fog began to roll in and Inaba rushed up to meet them. He wondered what that said about his nephew, if Inaba was the more interesting of the two.

They pulled in at the nearest gas station. Adachi parked and let the attendant take care of the rest while he stepped aside to call Dojima. It wasn't long before the older detective picked up.

"Sir?" Adachi reported. "I've just got back into town."

"Good." The new strain of weariness in Dojima's voice was undisguised and layered with tension. "How's your nephew?"

Adachi stopped as he pondered how best to answer that. He decided to go with "…Quiet. But anyhow, have we got a lead yet?"

"No. They just brought down the corpse."

"Any theories as to how that got strung up without anyone noticing?" There was a delay in the reply, and Adachi realized that a month's worth of sarcasm probably had Dojima questioning whether or not he had meant that to be taken seriously. He was about to clarify when Dojima decided to answer anyway.

"Not yet," he admitted. "We don't do this too often, so they're being cautious."

That made sense, though he wondered what sorts of procedures were taking them that long to run through, if their unit had only gotten so far into the investigation. To be fair, there'd been a good number of useless people even within the city's police force, and with the general inefficiency of Inaba's cops, nothing should have surprised him anymore. Sometimes he could understand why Dojima had insisted on taking on all the major crimes by himself, at least before he'd been assigned Adachi as a partner…

And if Adachi wasn't in the mood for small town felonies, which was always, then Dojima still ended up dealing with those on his own. "Huh," he said thoughtfully. "Well, we're stopped at Moel's. Where are we meant to be?"

"Head towards Junes; we're at the Kodo residence. The area's closed off but the crowd should be a dead give away."

"Alright, Sir. Be right with you."

He snapped the cell phone shut and walked back to the car. Whoever the murderer had been—and it had probably been murder, you couldn't suicide like that from an antenna, otherwise everyone would be doing it, and no one got hung like that accidentally—he was up against the most inept police force in Japan. That, and one very bored screw-up detective. It'd be interesting to see where this thing went. The attendant was speaking with his nephew, who had stepped outside for whatever reason.

"Narukami-kun," he called over, "we're leaving." Yu nodded and shook hands with the attendant before returning to his seat. Adachi waited until they were driving away before he glanced back curiously. "What did she want?"

There's a pause, and Yu fixed him with a startled gaze. "She?"

Adachi grinned.

"Yeah, it's hard to tell, isn't it? Friendliest gas attendant I've ever met." He turned back to the road. "Maybe that's just the way they are in the sticks."

"I was just wondering that."

"You really have no idea…" There were all sorts of weird complaints that came in through the office, enough to confirm that half the population of the backcountry was insane. For instance, one of their regular twits called in every few days to complain about how the police weren't doing enough to cull the impending menace that was Inaba's feline community. After the fourth time, Adachi had informed Shinohara-san that there must have been some grave oversight in town security, and that he ought to come over the next morning to discuss possibilities with his superior. It would be better for everyone, they had agreed, to risk incurring only a thousand years of bad luck before the cats had the opportunity to multiply even further. He had spent the night printing posters urging feline awareness and then had taped them up all over the office before anyone else had come in. The best part had been watching Dojima struggle to keep his composure in front of a fragile and impressionable civilian; less fun had been the shouting that came after. "So what were you chatting about?"

"She was welcoming me to town," Yu said blandly, "and she offered me a job."

"Right…" Sono would have him killed if this ended up causing trouble for her later. Adachi permitted overtones of 'responsible adult' to bleed into his voice. "To be honest, Moel's isn't in any state to be hiring, Yu-kun—Inaba's a small enough town that most places are within walking distance, so usually the only business they get is from commuters who work in Okina City." He shot his nephew an odd look. "Unless that isn't the sort of job she was offering you?"

Yu's expression drained. "I don't think..."

"Either way," he said carelessly, "I'd turn that one down."

There was another silence in the car, but Adachi had decided that he didn't care. They were close enough to Dojima's location that it wouldn't last for too long.

He parked them just outside the mob surrounding the Kodos' house. The area had been barricaded off with line and traffic cones. Several uniformed officers were keeping the spectators at bay, and blue tarp hung up to hide whatever they were up to inside. Out of everyone in the crowd, he could only pick out one or two standing in front of cameras, which meant that either the main bulk of Inaba's reporters must not have caught on yet, or more likely, were occupied with an impromptu conference elsewhere. Adachi stepped out and opened the car's back door.

"Hey, Yu-kun," he said cheerfully. "You want to come along?"

Yu turned to take in the crime scene before staring back at him. "...Is that allowed?"

"No." It wouldn't do to give Dojima a complete victory here. He didn't know how the other detective would respond, though he could make a guess, and in any case the uncertainty of it all was what made this fun. "But it's like I said, this is the most exciting thing you'll see all year, so..." He shrugged.

The speed with which Narukami accepted that excuse was something he'd have to worry about later.

They made their way through to the restricted zone soon enough, and then Adachi flashed his badge at the right people until they led him off to where they needed to be. Dojima was standing next to a trolley with a human-shaped bundle laid out on it, his jacket removed and slung over one shoulder. He had been watching the forensics team, or what in Inaba passed for a forensics team, poking about on the Kodo's roof. As they got closer, Dojima looked their way, and his gaze swung noticeably from the younger detective, to Narukami, and back to Adachi where it became a disbelieving glare. He seemed about to strangle the air, but then his eyes shut, and one hand changed directions to pinch the bridge of his nose while the other fell to his side.

Adachi mentally marked that concession as a victory. "Dojima-san!" he called out, stepping forward as his nephew trailed along beside him. He smiled and clapped a hand on Yu's shoulder, then tactfully ignored the boy's embarrassment with well-honed obliviousness. "I decided to bring him along."

"_Adachi_…" Dojima looked as if he were skating the border between rage and resignation. "You want to explain why there's a civilian here?"

"Narukami-kun, this is Detective Dojima, head of investigations."

"Ah—" Yu quickly moved away from his uncle and bowed. "It's very nice to meet you, Sir."

Dojima nodded. "Welcome to Inaba," he sighed. "It's a shame you had to come in at such a bad time, though." He turned on Adachi. "If I didn't know better, I'd say that you'd made plans to be away during all of this."

Adachi laughed weakly. "D-Dojima-san… I wish I had that kind of insight," he muttered, rubbing his neck. Then he looked up with what resembled apology. "Um. Any updates on the case?" Dojima glared at him, and at some deep level Adachi was crowing. He coughed innocently. "So what you're saying is that we don't know squat."

"That's why we're investigating!" Dojima snarled.

"O-oh, so she didn't have a phone, or a business card, or something?" He gestured toward what was obviously the body. "This is the body, right?"

"I'm not putting up with that when there's a dead woman on our hands." Dojima's face was carefully disapproving as he followed the young detective's gaze. "There wasn't much to see there, but go ahead."

Adachi could tell from the smell that she hadn't been dead all that long, which was a stroke of luck for them, really.

"Do we know when she died?"

"They said around one o'clock, at the last estimate."

"Then that's a start," he said absently. "You should have mentioned that before…"

Adachi pulled back a corner of the shroud so that he could get a look at her face.

He stared at it.

Then he stepped back, and then he was sprinting towards the nearest patch of open grass and trying not to get stupid vomit all over his stupid suit, and _shit_ that had been Mayumi and she was dead and _he_… he was still vomiting, and Dojima was going to cuff him any moment now…

"Hey, Adachi!" He whipped around, one hand instinctively lifted to wipe his lips clean. Dojima sighed hugely. "How long are you going to act like a rookie? You want to be sent back to the central office? _Well?_"

He made a choking sound. "I'm s-sorry…" Adachi turned back to cough up the remaining contents of his stomach, his hands clenching at the grass as he tried to bring his breathing back under some measure of control. The smell was horrible, which was kind of fitting because shit, _that had been Mayumi_. That had been Mayumi, and that meant that he had killed someone for real, that he was going to lose his job this time and if they knew _then he was going to prison—_

Adachi cleaned his face again and stood, the taste of it still sour in his mouth. He stared off at Dojima, who did not have handcuffs out yet, but who was speaking quietly with Narukami. The older detective's gaze passed once in his direction before fixing again on his nephew. For a moment, panic threatened to send him retching again. Swallowing, and immediately wishing that he hadn't, he walked back over to them. Dojima was glaring.

"This is a homicide investigation. Thanks for the tip, but someone should get you out of here." _The tip? _His thoughts froze over in mid-contemplation, a frosted labyrinth in his mind. Had there been anything he'd let slip in the ride over, some little thing he'd said that would indict—no, it wasn't possible. That _wasn't possible_, because Narukami had decided to be a mute, and they hadn't discussed anything… Dojima scowled and turned his way. "Your kid says that the victim was Mayumi Yamano, the TV reporter."

Adachi narrowed his eyes before they could get any wider. Then they focused on Yu.

"How could you know that?" he asked harshly. "You've only just got here."

He shrugged. "She's been on the news."

"…That's right." Of course. He'd seen it too, that rumor, no, the report of her affair. His empty stomach knotted unpleasantly and he nodded. So it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Only, it couldn't be possible that no one else here had recognized her. Adachi forced his glance back onto the corpse. He'd talked about this with the guys at the office, and as the police, they'd have to keep track of local news, right? _Shit, he'd grabbed her shoulders, there's be handprints there and they'd match those to him in no time—_

Which meant that Dojima was screwing with him. Slowly, he looked up at his superior. If it was true, _if he was a suspect_, then this whole thing was a set up, and he'd stumbled all over it. There was an easy way to check that.

Adachi bowed. "Dojima-san, I'm sorry," he said levelly. "You were right; I'll take him home."

Dojima rounded on him. "Are you running off on me _again_?" he shouted. Adachi froze, _shit, SHIT, so they weren't going to let him leave_, but then Dojima was in his face, yelling at him, and there wasn't any escaping it. "_Adachi!_ Do you _want_ to be on this case?"

"I…" It dawned on him that while Dojima had never seen him at his best, he hadn't tried to take the measure of Dojima either. If he knew, then there'd be no point in running, but then if he _didn't know_, this might be the only opportunity to get out, but if he was waiting for him to make the damning move—and if there was something at the crime scene that pointed to him, then was it worse to assume they hadn't found it yet, or that they had? "I mean," he gestured uneasily at Yu, "he shouldn't be here. He just got into town—"

_He could call for—_

Dojima drew in a breath and looked off. "I'm going to start questioning the witness," he said. "If you're not back soon…"

"U-understood, Sir."

** (o) (o) (o) (o) (o)**

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><p>They had been driving in silence for several minutes when his uncle spoke. "Since when do teenagers give a damn about the news?"<p>

"They had a TV turned on at the station, while I was waiting for my train." He turned to look out the window again. Fog condensed around the roads and buildings like a half-formed suggestion, quiet with the weight of uncertainty. Yu watched it stir up in whirling patters as the car drove though and broke it into irregularities. "I'm just surprised the police hadn't heard of it."

"So you thought that, too?" Yu looked back and caught his uncle frowning uncertainly. Adachi was still pale from seeing the corpse, his eyes still a little wide, though whether that was from anxiety or just a carry over from his performance in front of Detective Dojima, he wasn't sure.

In fact, Yu didn't know how to interpret that at all. Adachi had been riling up his superior on purpose, which struck him as a transparently stupid move. What sort of goal was important enough to risk your employment? Dojima hadn't been about to fire him—was the older detective really just that tolerant, or was his uncle somehow indispensible and feeling the need to flaunt it?

"Maybe people care less about keeping up with news out here," he offered.

"There's nothing to watch but the news," Adachi said irritably. "It's also weird that they took so long to recover the body, when they should've known that any long exposure to the fog would contaminate it. It makes more sense to deal with things like that as soon as it's possible, don't you think?"

"I guess."

Adachi had kept his voice from rising, but now the vehemence in it was clear. "This is a joke," he breathed, "or they're even bigger idiots than I'd given most of them credit for." Then the young detective was laughing, and Yu suddenly wished that he wasn't so close to other man. "Sorry, sorry," murmured Adachi weakly, smiling with strange irony as the moment passed. "I'm just feeling… a little bit on edge. There's a weight to violent crimes that I've only just realized."

"You've never seen a murder?" He found that unlikely, and Adachi confirmed it soon enough with a stiff shake of his head.

"There was enough of that in the city." He didn't laugh this time, but his voice had pitched slightly with morbid amusement. "No, it's… what someone would have to be like, to hang a body like that. Dojima-san is right, I should've kept you out of it."

"Oh." He added, "It's been that sort of day from the beginning."

"Maybe so." The smile was gone from his uncle's face and had been replaced with something darker. "You know, I thought today was going to be slow, but instead it's been all kinds of messed up."

A minute later, Adachi had parked at a concrete apartment complex and had waited for him to grab his suitcase before walking up an old metal stairwell to the second floor. Conveniently, their door was the first on the row, and it wasn't long before Adachi had unlocked it and led the way inside.

They stopped at the mat that served as an entryway, and Yu looked down the dark hallway toward a room where dim light had silhouetted a low table. A window beside the entrance threw a second patch of light onto the paneled floor. Adachi switched on the ceiling lamps, and Yu saw that the hall also served as a kitchenette, complete with mini-fridge, coffee machine, microwave, a washer, and a pantry. On the other side of the hall, a door opened to what he supposed was the toilet. Yu stopped himself from showing any outward reaction, though the silence was probably a reply of its own. He stood rooted to the mat, at a loss.

"Socks are fine with me," Adachi remarked coldly from behind him.

"Right. Thanks." He slipped off his shoes and went a bit further inside.

Adachi reached into his jacket pocket and tossed him a house key. "There's a futon's set up for you in the loft." He paused, as if somewhat annoyed that there wasn't more to say. "I think that's it. You have my number, right?"

"Yes." He'd added that to his contacts list before leaving the city. Well, Yu had _assumed_ it was the right number. He hadn't actually tried calling.

"Dojima probably won't keep me overnight," Adachi continued, making a face as he rubbed the back of his neck, "but I'll let you know if that changes. Feel free to do whatever you want without trashing the place."

Then Adachi had closed the door on him, and Yu dragged his suitcase into the main room.

In the far corner was a television on a low shelf, and opposite from that a tall lamp and his uncle's work desk. The center of the room was taken up by a low table with two beige sitting cushions, though they were each ornamented with a different pattern, and in the other corner, next to the wall closets, was the light that he had seen from before, and which had turned out to be heating an impressive aquarium. Yu bent over the glass, and a pair of turtles stared up at him from an island beneath the basking lamp. The darker of the two actually turned away after a moment, but it was clear that neither of them found him interesting enough to do any investigating of their own.

Other than that, there wasn't a whole lot of decoration. Adachi had hung a framed landscape on the far wall, but probably because having nothing at all to hang was just embarrassing.

The wall on his side of the room was piled with several of the brown boxes that he had shipped over earlier. Yu placed his suitcase next to the largest stack, which stood beside a metal ladder that led to the loft. After testing a rung, he climbed up into the crawlspace, flicking on a switch for the ceiling light as he came in. His futon was laid out and took up the majority of the space, but there was a nook pushed back into the wall where Uncle Adachi had plugged in his small TV and PS2. At the far end of the loft, a metal rod strung with his clothes demarked what was going to be his closet. It was clear that Adachi had tried to make the best of it, but he hadn't been totally successful in stuffing everything inside. Yu climbed down the ladder again and looked hard at the unopened brown boxes. Then he went over to the table and grabbed the TV remote that had been sitting there, silently agreeing with his uncle's decision to leave them be.

It occurred to him that in an apartment like this, there would be absolutely no privacy.

His uncle had been right—he wasn't paying for extra channels, and as a result there was nothing to watch but the local news and children's anime. Yu switched off the TV soon after and stared listlessly at the blank screen for several minutes before he got up and cracked open the window beside the kitchenette. Fog blew in sluggishly through the gap, but the stuffiness of the apartment had become intolerable, and the afternoon fog was refreshingly cold.

**)-{ ** **)-{** **)-{** **)-{**

* * *

><p>As soon as the boy was settled and the door had swung closed, he moved toward the staircase railing, the focus of his glance cast down and systematically roaming, searching the area below for any backup Dojima might have tried to send along after them. On a first sweep, there didn't seem to be anyone out. That wasn't totally surprising—there was a hell of a lot of fog, and for one reason or another he was having difficulty coming up with good ideas, as if any mental clarity he'd gained since leaving Inaba had been confused and obscured by his arrival at the crime scene. There was a part of him that recognized that, and then there was a part of him that was raising his revolver to his head even as he reached the bottom of the stairs.<p>

The pressure of its cold barrel rested against his jaw, and he waited. Nothing. He blinked, slowly replaced the gun in its holster, and continued on into his car.

Chances were good, then, that there wasn't anyone waiting for the right moment to jump him. He'd kind of assumed that after Dojima had allowed him to drive off with a minor, but this was Inaba, and there was something to be said about being sure… Anyway, paranoia was a good thing if it kept you out of prison, wasn't it? At least he thought it was, but again, his head wasn't functioning the way it should have been, and as far as prison went—well, he'd never thought, when Mayumi had fallen through that screen…

He really hadn't thought anything. Huh. Adachi had already pulled back onto the street when it occurred to him that of all the stuff he should have been thinking, he hadn't actually considered turning himself in, and by the time he'd realized that, it wasn't an option.

The obvious thing to draw from all this was that the TV was a whole lot more dangerous than he'd thought. He'd have to look into that, right? Since he couldn't investigate from jail, getting arrested wasn't an option. And Mayumi—

_eyes that were almost violet rolled back into her head, bulging, wide, her skin cold and drained and wet with condensation, and still, still, still, stretched, he had been unable to move, her lips too pale beneath the gloss, lips that were quiet, he couldn't move, her hair_

—And the reporter had been researching the Midnight Channel, too, before she died. The police could take in anything she'd discovered as evidence in the murder case. All that was left was to be on the investigation, and for that, he only needed to get back to the crime scene.

Tohru Adachi pressed down softly on the accelerator, and the world rolled by.

_(((0)))_

* * *

><p><em>"Let us hasten", said the Commissary.<em>

_So one of the two men stretched out his hand, began to unstitch the shroud, and, lifting the end of it, suddenly exposed the face of Marguerite._

_It was terrible to see; it is horrible to relate._

_-The Lady of the Camellias, Alexandre Dumas_

_._

_AN: I don't know how many of you have been following Persona 4: the Animation, but it recently ran its last episode, and starting from episode 21, the finale has been a lot of fun. The best stream is probably at Anime Network, where you can watch the entire series legally and for free._

_Anyway, thank you to everyone who's wished me off to a good start—I hope the rest of it lives up to your expectations! Critique is always appreciated._

_Next Week: Investigation Team Go! No, not the teenagers, the __real__ detectives. There's actually a case to _conveniently screw up_ solve._


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